These phrases come from The Day12 Phrase Book, which contains phrases in a variety of other languages. I think the same template, which includes the above phrases, is used for all languages.

According to this site, most Luxembourgers speak at least three languages – Luxembourgish, French and German, and use them in their daily lives. Luxembourgish is the national language, French is used for legislative matters, all three languages are used in education, and French and German are the main written languages.

Sorry James, I disagree. Dutch may have the same roots as German, being a Germanic language; but then so are Danish or Swedish. Nobody would call those a German dialect.
Granted, in the North East, people speak a Saxon derived dialect, closely related to and mutually comprehensible with Platt Duetsch.

In general, most Dutch speakers can understand a fair bit of German, while the reverse is not true.

I’ve always been interested in Luxembourgish- not interested to learn it, mind you- but interested by the sound. It’s so pleasant sounding. I don’t know if it’s the french influence or what, but it has a beautifully romantic. I can’t generally say this for Germanic languages either.

Interesting site! Am doing a bit of research for a linguistics project and so I came across this site.
As native Luxembourgian I’d say “One language is never enough” is “Eng Sprooch as ni genuch” but I think I’d better not try to translate the other sentence as I haven’t been home in a year and, to be honest, the word for “eels” has slipped my mind. ;)

“By the way: many Germans see “Luxembourgish” as a dialect.”
That is maybe because they are ignorant about Luxembourg. It seems very arrogant to define someone’s language as your own dialect, only because it has similarities.

The most impressive thing about the native Luxembourgish people is, that they are able to juggle between minimum 3 languages, and usually even more.

To clarify there are 2 different words for ‘I’ and ‘We’ : ‘Ech’ and ‘Mir’.

‘One language is never enough’
= “Nemmen eng Sprooch geet nie duer”.
or another version = ” Just eng Sprooch as nie genuch”.

I visited Luxembourg twice recently and I have to say the language mix there is really confusing. The language you hear spoken by people in the streets is mostly French, but the language of the newspapers, TV and radio seems to be mainly German. I seemed to get by okay speaking just German (I have no French), except in fancy restaurants where they look at you like a backward bumpkin if you can’t speak French. Not that I visit fancy restaurants much, mind you.

And Luxembourgish, that is a language you only come across late at night. I wonder why that is, but I never heard any Luxembourgish spoken during daytime, although late-night TV and radio is full of it. Not that I watch late-night TV much, mind you.